CIROS Robot Makes Your Salad

CIROS is a knife-wielding Korean robot able to recognize many common objects like microwaves, sinks, refrigerators, and dishwashers and it can move around in the kitchen as well as you can.

And it makes salad! As seen in the following video.

(CIROS robot makes salad video)

CIROS stands 5'3" (160 cm) tall, weighs 330 pounds (150 kg), and moves in any direction thanks to its wheeled base. [Its] head contains a Kinect which it uses to recognize objects. It also [has] speech recognition capability with a 12-piece microphone array. has It can detect and avoid obstacles in its vicinity thanks to a pair of laser range finders and six ultrasonic sensors in its body. Its hands are identical to those developed for HUBO (another robot developed separately at KAIST), and can hold a variety of objects and tools, making it capable of pouring drinks, carrying trays, loading a dishwasher and slicing vegetables.

Anthony Boucher was early with the idea of a robot chef in his 1943 story Robinc:

"Half your time in cooking is wasted reaching around for what you need next. We can build in a lot of that stuff. For instance, one tentacle can be a registering thermometer. tapering to a find point - stick it in a roast and - One can end in a broad spoon for stirring - heat resistant, of course. One might terminate in a sort of hand, of which each of the digits was a different-sized measuring spoon..
(Read more about Boucher's robot chef)

As you can see, Boucher's robot was a usuform robot, rather than a humanoid robot like CIROS.